Ten
AIRPORT
WE GOT ON the plane at two in the morning that night.
I argued with Nick... with both of them really, but mostly with Nick. I didn’t want them to come with me. I told them I should go alone, that they should stay away from this in terms of being on the ground.
Nick wouldn’t even discuss it.
And truthfully, he was right. He was the one with the connections in Paris. He was the one who had people waiting for us over there.
He also pulled some strings and got fake passports for all three of us, using one of his old Special Ops pals who now worked in the State Department.
I knew the IDs probably wouldn’t help us hide from Lucky’s people, of course.
Not only did Lucky’s people know what I looked like, they’d probably be able to track me via Black, much less the RFID chip in my arm.
When it came to this seer thing, there was no way to be safe.
We also couldn’t trust anyone, including Nick’s pal at the State Department.
Even someone who might honestly be trying to help us could be read or manipulated by a trained seer. Black said that seer skills were significantly diminished in this dimension compared to where he grew up, but he also seemed to think Lucky found some way around that, at least in part––maybe by collecting all the known seers and pooling their abilities in some way.
Either way, it was unnerving in the extreme, not having any idea who we could trust.
Nick argued he’d already involved himself too much to not be at risk.
Angel didn’t even bother to argue. She just showed up at my apartment in the Richmond in a cab and knocked on my door around eleven-thirty that night. We picked up Nick about twenty minutes later, since he lived south of the city and closer to the airport.
We didn’t talk much during the flight itself.
I sat between Nick and Angel and tried my damnedest to sleep, knowing we wouldn’t have any time to waste once we landed. I couldn’t sleep, though. I ended up sitting there with my eyes closed, looking for Black in that dream-like space.
I never found him. He’d gone quiet not long after our fight on the phone, and I had no idea what the silence meant.
As the flight progressed, I got hit by images––really, more like paranoid movie-reels––that wanted to play incessantly in my head. I tried to tell myself they weren’t real, that they were just my mind working overtime, but some part of me doubted that. In those flashes, shadowy forms broke down Black’s door, dragging him out of the room with the high ceilings and the fireplace. I saw Black bundled into the back of a van, Black cuffed and shoved into that creepy renaissance dining room with Grigiore and a long table filled with more people like him––people with strange-colored irises and oddly perfect faces.
I saw Ian. Not with them, but somewhere else, watching maybe, like I was.
A Thai mask hung on the wall behind him, and he sat smiling, perched in a high-backed chair on one end of an empty, warehouse-like room.
In the dining room where Black sat chained, humans served them food. I glimpsed naked women––not just the seer I’d seen before, different women that time, most of them with normal-looking eyes. I saw naked men too, but I winced away from most of that, not wanting to know what they were doing, or if it had anything to do with Black.
I tried to get the voice I’d heard before to come back, to tell me what was going on... but my unnamed source remained silent.
Later, as our plane was on final approach to Charles de Gaulle Airport, I got more flashes, glimpses of arguments, of someone standing over Black, the room darker, more empty, seemingly lit with something other than electric light. The main person talking to Black that time looked older, well into middle age.
He had eerie, dark red irises.
He didn’t wear a robe covered in elaborate symbols that time, but I recognized him.
I knew I’d risked Black’s life, saying those things to him on the phone. It had been a gamble that they wouldn’t kill him, that they wanted him badly enough that they wouldn’t hurt him too badly either––at least no more than they were already.
I had to hope I had enough safeguards set up to reason with them.
I knew it was a gamble... a potentially big one. On the other hand, I also knew any or all of those things could have happened regardless.
We were standing in line for customs when I saw the first one.
As I focused on the odd-colored eyes staring at me, another one joined him.
I gave Nick a bare glance. “Eleven o’clock. Trench coat. And his friend.”
Nick turned, the tiredness wiped from his expression. Before I could aim my eyes back in that direction, he was already speaking into his sleeve. He’d donned the earpiece and microphone while we were waiting to disembark from the plane.
I cautioned, “They need to knock them out before they’re seen. They can’t leave them conscious, Nick... or it’s all over.”
Before I could finish speaking, the first one went down. The tall male with him turned sharply, looking behind him, then slapped a hand to his neck.
Then his legs crumpled, too.
I glanced at Nick, who gave me a grim smile, right before he spoke into his sleeve a second time. I heard him say, “Nice shootin’, Tex.”
I smiled wanly, in spite of myself.
Even so, my nerves were jacked up enough that I couldn’t stop scanning faces in the cavernous room. I didn’t see any more of them. I kept looking, unable to slow the adrenaline pumping through my veins.
We got an escort to the short line for customs, not long after.
After the three of us went through an abbreviated passport check, Angel and a uniformed French officer left to talk to the head of airport security.
Nick and I followed three different men and a woman, all of them wearing suits. They met us on the other side of customs. So did Nick’s two friends, who wore militarized police uniforms and body armor. After giving Angel the okay to go, the six of them led us to a small interrogation room just on the other side of the long line of customs booths. Inside that windowless room, both of the men I’d seen wearing trench coats had already been laid out on collapsible cots, like what EMTs used for ambulatory transport.
“Can you ID either of these guys?” Nick muttered as we stood over the unconscious forms. “They’ll want to know how you recognized them.”
I looked down at the bodies. I didn’t know either of them, not even via Black. Glancing up at the three men and one woman in suits who stood next to Nick’s friends, speaking in low voices, I shook my head, glancing at Nick.
“So how do we answer that?” Nick murmured.
“You’ll think of something,” I said, equally quiet.
He let out a grunt, but didn’t answer.
I focused on the two bodies laid out on gurneys. Looking over their faces, I made sure to memorize their features so I would recognize them later.
I knew Nick would think of something in terms of how we’d ID’d them, despite his annoyance. Glancing around, it occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea what organization any of the people in the room represented, not even Nick’s friends. I’d assumed at first they were members of France’s Gendarmerie, the investigative branch of the national police force, but now, scanning clothes and faces, I wasn’t so sure.
“Is it all right if I touch them?” I asked in French.
The person who appeared to me to be in charge, a forty-something man in a blue suit with grey-streaked dark hair and dark blue eyes, frowned a little bit, looking me over, then nodded.
I bent down and lifted the eyelids of the first man lying there, then the second. One had violet irises, like Solonik, only darker and with a light blue ring around the edge. The other male’s eyes were nearly black in color, darker than the darkest brown eyes I’d ever seen. Inside that dark color, pale blue flecks stood out, almost like stars.
“What the fuck?” Nick muttered.
He bent down like I had, lifting their eyelids one by one. He stared at the violet irises the longest, then glanced over his shoulder at me, frowning.
“They’re not contact lenses,” he murmured. “Did they do this surgically? Is this part of the cult thing, Miri? To have fucked-up eyes?”
I saw him frown before I’d answered him, as if thinking.
Straightening, he looked at the features of the two men, then seemed to be measuring their heights, their overall builds, before going back to their faces.
I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking the same thing.
They looked different.
Different from normal people, I mean.
They also looked like Black.
Not really like him, exactly, but the similarity there was impossible to refute, or to un-see once it had been seen.
It was hard to pinpoint what it was exactly that was so starkly different about the two men compared to the other people in the room, but lying side by side, even with their eyes closed, that difference was obvious. They both had high cheekbones, strangely perfect mouths, young faces, unblemished and even-toned skin. Both were unusually tall, six-four or six-five from what I could tell with them lying down, with slim hips and broad shoulders.
Both had black hair. There was something faintly Asian about their features, although either could have passed for white, particularly if they weren’t standing next to one another. Both were unusually handsome, as in model or actor handsome, but there was something strange about that handsomeness, an unreal and oddly androgynous quality, despite how muscular they both were, and how prominent their jaws and Adam’s apples.
I remembered how strange Black looked to me when I first saw him, and Solonik.
Ian hid it better and frankly looked more human to me even now, but on Black and Solonik, that strangeness had been obvious from the start. Solonik looked like a vampire to me when I’d first seen him in that dim basement in Bangkok.
I knew Nick saw what I saw.
Moreover, I knew he’d already made the connection to similarities in Black’s appearance, in his features... in his gold-colored irises. That sculpted mouth.
Hell, Nick might even see those similarities in how I looked.
For the first time, my mind went over the different aspects of my own features, cataloguing those similarities, even though I’d always been told I looked more like my mom than my dad.
Until now, I’d never considered that the seer thing might be visible on me.
Nor had I really considered what that might mean to me personally if information about seers ever went public. The idea that my connection to Black’s “people” might be something someone could see just by looking at me was a little frightening. Based on what Black told me about that other dimension, that might not work out very well for me, either.
I didn’t read Nick as he stared between the two bodies, cataloguing those differences, but I found myself thinking he was starting to connect those dots already. He likely hadn’t come up with a coherent explanation for what it all meant, but he’d definitely noticed something off with my story about who and what these people were.
Knowing Nick, he already knew I’d lied to him about that.
Or perhaps he thought it was Black who’d lied to me.
Without answering his question, I looked back at the four people standing there in suits, talking to Nick’s friends in the body armor. After clearing my throat so they glanced over, I asked them in my rusty French what they intended to do with the suspects when they woke up.
That same man with the gray-streaked hair explained to me that they’d would be booked and questioned, initially for being in the customs area of the airport without authorization, but possibly with suspected domestic or international terrorism, depending on what they uncovered.
From a brief pass over his mind, I felt he was more than a little puzzled about how they’d gotten past security. Both men had been armed, I now saw, glancing to my right, where holsters and sidearms had been placed on a separate stainless steel table.
I’d expected them to ask Nick the questions since they knew him and he’d been the one to contact them before we got here.
But the blue-eyed man looked only at me when he next spoke.
“Do you know these men?” he said.
I shook my head. “No.”
“How did you identify them as a threat?”
“I recognized their faces from photographs,” I lied.
“From where?”
“My employer.” I glanced at Nick. “I don’t know what Detective Tanaka has told you, but I work for a private investigation and securities firm based out of San Francisco. My employer has encountered this group before. He showed me photographs once. Known associates.”
“You have photographs of members of this organized crime family?” The man’s eyebrows rose, right before he glanced at Nick. His eyes returned to me, studying my face with a more cop-like interest. “These are the same people you believe have your lover, yes? Is he not also your employer?”
When I didn’t answer, he looked between me and Nick a second time.
“You have photographs of these people now? With you?” The man focused on Nick. “Will your government share this information as well? Since we are aiding in your investigation?”
I glanced at Nick, too.
Apparently he’d told them this was a government-sponsored thing.
He’d also told them a lot more about me and Black than made me strictly comfortable, but I could understand that, too. After all, Nick trained me. He’d always said it was better to tell the truth in as much of a situation as you could, especially if you were hiding a big lie.
Moreover, personal motives could often mask less-personal ones.
When Nick only raised an eyebrow at me, basically his cue to “tell them whatever you want,” I fought back a scowl.
“I don’t have the photos with me unfortunately,” I said, looking back at the man with the blue eyes. “I can contact people at my firm, and ask them to send you whatever they have. It may be complicated by the fact that my boss is currently indisposed. I am new to working for him, so I don’t know their exact protocol for releasing that information... at least not without the boss’s permission.”
“This boss who is currently being blackmailed by this same group?”
“Yes.”
“You cannot reach him now?”
“Not for two days, no.”
“Why did he have this list?” the man asked, his blue eyes holding a sharper scrutiny. “Initially, I mean. How did he become involved with this group?”
I shrugged. “A case? I honestly don’t know.”
“What did he tell you about this group? Before the two days since you have been unable to communicate with him?”
“Very little, I’m afraid. And he went dark with his company when he came over here... so I don’t know how much any of them know either.”
“But he has been in Paris for months, no?” The blue-eyed man’s eyes narrowed. “I was under the impression the two of you were in contact. Prior to these two days.”
I nodded, exhaling a little. “Yes. We’ve spoken. But only in regard to personal matters, I’m afraid. He made it clear he wasn’t free to speak about anything else, that his communications were being monitored.”
The man frowned, nodding, then glanced at the other three people in suits.
The woman was murmuring something to another agent, a man with sandy blond hair and a large nose. All four of them murmured to one another briefly in French, too low for me to catch most of it. I could tell without reading them that they had some awareness of Mr. Lucky already, and not just from Nick. Apparently he’d been operating in Paris for several years at least.
Nick’s pals remained mostly quiet, but I could tell they were listening, too.
Eventually, the blue-eyed man turned back to me.
“Do you know how they are connected here?” he said. “At the airport?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m sorry. I really don’t.”
“But you knew they might come here?”
“My employer implied there was a risk, yes.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you had lost touch with your employer?”
“We have...” I looked at Nick, then back at the man. “...I have. He told me before. Not about France specifically. He told me I would be followed if I left San Francisco, and that they might try to kill me or kidnap me if I came after him.”
“And you know for certain he is still in France?”
“Last I knew he was here, in Paris. It made sense to start here.”
The man continued to watch me with those sharp eyes, now basically ignoring Nick. “Just to confirm, this is Quentin Black to whom we are referring, yes? The man whose information we got from Detective Tanaka?”
I nodded. “Yes. I don’t know what Nick gave you...”
Letting my voice trail, I glanced at Nick, my eyebrow quirked, but he didn’t return my gaze.
The man in the suit nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t satisfied.
I felt him wavering about bringing us to the station that night, to question us more before we could leave the city. I pushed lightly on his mind when I felt the direction of his thoughts, concentrating all of my focus on what I wanted him to think instead.
Later... I pushed softly. It can wait until tomorrow. Focus on the main suspects first...
The man’s blue eyes blanked briefly.
Then he turned away from me, and spoke for a few minutes to Nick’s friends in the body armor, one of whom still held a tranquilizer gun. I felt myself relax when I caught the gist of his thoughts and words. I had no idea if my mental “push” was the cause, but he’d decided not to detain us that night after all, but to wait and question us tomorrow.
The man turned back to me and Nick then, smiling for the first time.
“Okay, thank you very much... both of you... for your help in this matter. We always appreciate any cooperation and information sharing between our two governments.” His smile seemed somewhat put on over the more clinical look I saw in his eyes, especially when he looked at me, but he was going to let us go, which is all I cared about. “...I think we have enough from you for tonight.”
I definitely caught the emphasis on the last word.
Nick shook hands all around with the people wearing suits, then gave a short wave and a nod of thanks to his friends in the body armor.
He motioned for me to follow him out once he had.
The man with the blue eyes called after us as Nick opened the door.
“We will likely need you later, Detective Tanaka,” he said politely, his eyes on me as he spoke. “...You and your charming friend, Dr. Fox. I would appreciate it very much if you could make yourselves available for questioning at a less obscene hour of this day. Perhaps in the early afternoon, after you’ve had time to sleep off the worst of your jetlag?”
Another of those wolf-like smiles.
“...After we’ve had time to question the suspects, of course.”
I doubted the “suspects” would remain in custody for more than a few minutes after the tranquilizer darts wore off, but I only glanced at Nick.
“Of course,” Nick said, giving him a thin-lipped smile in return.
“And perhaps your friend, Ms. Fox, could get us those photographs for us by that time?” the man added. “Or inquire at least... as to her new employer’s ‘procedures’ for such a thing?”
His voice remained sweet, but that wolf-like stare never left my face.
Which again, might have worried me, if I thought he’d remember any of this in a few hours.
Still, I felt bad for him in a way. He was just doing his job.
“Of course,” I murmured, smiling back, and pretending I didn’t see the harder stare behind his smile. “I’ll call them tonight... since it’s business hours there.”
“Excellent.” He beamed, holding out his hands in a kind of thanks. “Thank you so very much... both of you. Your help is most appreciated.”
I noticed he never really took that harder stare off me, though.
“WHO WERE THOSE guys?” I asked Nick in a murmur as we walked through the last checkpoint in customs and towards baggage claim.
Nick shrugged, not looking at me as he walked.
“DST,” he murmured, meaning The Directorate of Territorial Surveillance, their domestic intelligence department. He gave me a bare glance. “...Maybe DGST. Jean’s done stints for the Ministry of Defense. He and Lauren both technically work for the Gendarmerie now, but with specialized units to combat wider domestic threats. I told them to bring in whoever they needed to get us through the airport in one piece... and to ID these fuckers.”
I nodded. I was familiar with both sets of initials, having worked in intelligence myself.
I also knew what Nick was driving at.
His friends worked for anti-terrorism units connecting French intelligence to the national police force. “DGSE” was France’s foreign intelligence service and, if I remembered correctly, stood for “General Directorate for External Surveillance.” It was the counterpoint to DST, and focused on threats from outside of the country.
Unlike the United States, France didn’t have its own Homeland Security Department, but the presence of either or both intelligence services definitely suggested they viewed Lucky as that kind of threat, meaning a potential political threat as well as a criminal one.
I wondered if they’d gotten that idea from Nick, too.
We found Angel waiting for us by our flight’s baggage claim carousel.
Since we’d gotten through customs so quickly, most of our flight’s passengers were still standing there, bleary-eyed, and waiting for their luggage to appear.
Angel finished before us, since Airport Security wouldn’t give her access to much.
They did let her look at surveillance footage for the customs area, but unfortunately, the footage wasn’t particularly helpful. Angel said it showed the same two guys walking from the parking lot through baggage claim and back through customs, past numerous check points and without anyone seeming to notice them. They strolled through the final customs checkpoint in plain sight of five armed soldiers and three people manning passport booths, without anyone so much as blinking.
No one appeared to have seen them at all until a few seconds before they got hit by those tranquilizer darts.
Nick and Angel didn’t ask me how I’d seen them when no one else could, but I guessed they knew it had something to do with the psychic thing. I didn’t offer any additional information, but really, there wasn’t much I could have told them, even if I wanted to.
And frankly, it wasn’t my priority right then.
I had the radio frequency identification or “RFID” tracker app open on my phone before we’d even gotten our bags off the baggage claim carousel. That had been my one and only condition with Black, when he wanted to put an RFID chip in my arm in Bangkok.
I’d agreed to the chip, but only if he did the same––and only if he gave me access to the data so I could track him the same way he could me.
Black was in the center of the city, not far from the Louvre.
According to the GPS map, Black might actually be in the Louvre. Which was more than a little strange, given that it was just after two o’clock in the morning, Paris time.
I could tell I was going to get an earful from Nick about those two seers they’d tranked, but he didn’t say anything until we’d already collected our luggage and gone to the rental car booth inside the terminal. He finally turned to me once we were standing by the curb, waiting for the company to deliver our car.
“Are you going to explain what I saw in there, Miri?” he said.
I blinked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.” Nick gave me a warning look, folding his arms. “Who the fuck are those guys? What’s up with their eyes? Why do they all...” He made a jerked motion with his hand, the leather creaking on his beat-up leather jacket. “...Look like him?”
I knew who Nick meant. He meant Black.
I gave him a warning look, right as a car rolled up in front of where we stood. The car stopped altogether when Angel flagged the driver down. Only then did I notice the placard with the car rental company’s logo on the windshield.
The driver put the car in park then hopped out of the dark blue sedan, handing Angel the registration paperwork on a clipboard along with a pen.
Nick and I watched her deal with him for a few seconds, then Nick scowled back in my general direction.
“This isn’t just about people being trained as ‘psychics,’ is it Miri?” he said.
I shrugged, focusing past him as the same rental car employee started loading our baggage into the trunk of the car.
When I didn’t answer, Nick pressed me again.
“Is this about genetic experimentation of some kind?” he said, lowering his voice when I shot him another warning glance. “...Something military? Whatever it is, Black’s obviously involved. They all fucking look like him, Miriam. Or were you going to tell me you didn’t notice?”
When I put a finger to my lips, glancing at the rental car employee, Nick’s scowl only deepened. Meanwhile, that same employee had taken the placard out of the windshield and was indicating for Angel to sign on one more line on the form attached to the clipboard.
“...Kind of weird, wouldn’t you say?” Nick added, still in a near-whisper. “That both of Lucky’s guys just happen to look like your boyfriend? Are they brothers, maybe? Cousins? Or were you going to say it’s all just a coincidence?”
Remembering how seers had a tendency to call one another “brother” and “sister,” I pursed my lips, but still didn’t answer him. The rental car guy gave Angel a final wave and disappeared through the revolving doors of the airport terminal.
“What are you guys arguing about?” she said, walking towards us and jangling the keys. “You’re not being particularly subtle, whatever it is.”
Not answering either of them, I walked directly to the car. Snapping the rear-door handle with one hand, I opened it and slid into the back seat, slamming the door behind me and leaning back with a sigh. I was too tired and worried about Black to field Nick’s questions very well. Still, I knew I had to come up with something to tell them. If not now, then soon.
Angel drove.
Nick sat shotgun, looking back at me off and on the whole drive into the city.
“You’re really not going to tell us what’s up?” Nick pressed.
“What are you talking about?” Angel glanced at Nick then at me in the rearview mirror.
“Those fucking guys.” Nick turned, looking at her. “They looked like Black.”
“What guys? You mean the ones who went after us in customs?” She glanced over her shoulder at me, her eyebrows rising. “Did they really look like Black, doc?”
Folding my arms, I let out a sigh, doing my best clinical voice.
“Not really, no.” I ignored Nick’s derisive snort, looking at Angel in the rearview mirror. “But there are... similarities.”
Nick let out another disbelieving grunt.
“Like what?” Angel said, glancing at him before she looked at me. “What kinds of similarities?”
“Like weird fucking eyes,” Nick said. “They just looked like him. I can’t explain it. Roughly the same age, same build, black hair, weird ethnicity stuff. Unusually tall. All the things wrong with Black, they were wrong with these guys too. The had similar features, for fuck’s sake. They didn’t look like him exactly, but there was definitely something...”
Nick grunted again, giving me a harder stare.
“...And they looked like damned underwear models,” he added in a grumble.
Angel let out a laugh. “You mean they’re hot?”
“Yes,” Nick said, his voice devoid of humor. “And I’m serious, Ang. There’s something really fucking weird here, and the doc knows more about it than she’s saying.”
Sighing, I folded my arms tighter, also crossing my legs.
“Nick, you’re overreacting,” I said. “And okay, I agree there’s something... strange... about the way they look. But it’s not important right now, okay?”
“Not important now?” Nick gave me an incredulous look.
“It’s not,” I insisted. “I’m telling you, the issue is what they can do, not what they look like. Maybe their looks are connected to the psychic ability... some weird genetic anomaly that makes them look different from other people...” That part was more or less true, even if I couldn’t tell them the extent of it. “...In any case, it’s not the most relevant thing right now, is it? What they look like?”
“What they look like,” Nick countered, pointing a finger at me in an ah-ha kind of way. “Who’s ‘they,’ Miriam? I know you know what I’m talking about. Just the fact that you’re trying to avoid the subject tells me you know more than––”
“Psychics,” I cut in, exhaling. “I meant psychics. Like the kind of psychic Black is. And no, Nick, I don’t know anything more about that than you do.”
Okay, so that wasn’t strictly true. But I couldn’t get into this with them now. If nothing else, it was a distraction none of us could afford, not until we’d found Black.
“You’re saying they’re a separate species, doc?” Angel said, glancing at me again.
I froze. That was a little closer to the mark than I’d intended.
“Why would you say that?” I said.
I saw Nick and Angel exchange another one of their looks.
“Look, we’re here to get Black.” I clenched and unclenched my jaw. “Can we just focus on that first? We can talk about conspiracy theories involving genetic experimentation by ex-KGB psychos later, all right? Maybe Black knows something. Use it as motivation to get him out of this alive, if you need to. But we’re not going to discuss this now.”
Nick gave me another skeptical look. Even so, after he’d studied my eyes a few seconds longer, I saw him decide to shelve it. I continued to hold his stare when he sighed, combing a hand through his black hair.
“Whatever you say, doc,” he muttered.
Rearranging his muscular bulk in the bucket seat so that he faced forward, he glanced at Angel. I saw her quirk an eyebrow in return, but neither of them spoke.
They didn’t have to, really. I already knew this wouldn’t be the last I’d heard about those two seers, or how they looked like Black.
Moreover, I knew their suspicions would only get worse, given where we were going.